Misplaced Pages

House demolition (military): Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 16:46, 9 June 2007 editFormer user 2 (talk | contribs)7,183 edits History← Previous edit Latest revision as of 22:38, 3 September 2024 edit undoRMCD bot (talk | contribs)Bots, Template editors995,989 edits Removing notice of move discussion 
(363 intermediate revisions by more than 100 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Short description|Military tactic}}
:''This article is about a tactic for combating an insurgency. For civilian demolition of houses, see ].''
{{About|the demolition of houses for military or punitive civil purposes| the demolition of houses in the Palestinian Territories|House demolition in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict|the demolition of buildings in general|demolition}}
]
]


'''House demolition''' is primarily a ] which has been used in many conflicts for a variety of purposes. It has been employed as a ] tactic to deprive the advancing enemy of food and shelter, or to wreck the enemy's economy and infrastructure. It has also been used for purposes of ] and ]. Systematic house demolition has been a notable factor in a number of recent or ongoing conflicts including the ] in ], the ], the ], the ], and the ].
'''House demolition''' (also known as '''house razing''') is a ], particularly an insurgency which employs ]. Although house demolitions have been used in small-scale in a number of conflicts, house demolition has become a controversial component of the ].


The tactic has often been extremely controversial. Its use in warfare is governed by the ] and other instruments of ], and international war crimes courts have prosecuted the misuse of house demolition on a number of occasions as a violation of the ]. Historically, it has also been widely used by a variety of states and peoples as a civil punishment for criminal offences ranging from treason to public intoxication
== Purposes ==
House demolition has several purposes:
* Deterrence, achieved by harming the relatives of those who carry out, or are suspected of involvement in carrying out, attacks <ref></ref>
* Destroying militant infrastructures such as ]s ]s, headquarters and offices.
* Forcing out an individual who barricades inside a house, which may be rigged with explosives, without risking soldiers' lives.
* Prevent shooting on forces by destroying possible hideouts.<ref></ref>
* During combat: to demolish a house from which militants are shooting.<ref></ref>
* Clear way for ]s and heavy ]s.


== Means == ==Uses==


===Military uses===
* ]s
] before it was finally taken by Allied troops.<ref> {{webarchive|url=http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20070706011932/http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/mar45.html |date=2007-07-06 }} See the entry for 23/24 March 1945</ref>]]
* ]s planted by ] forces.
]
* Bombing the house with ] or ]


A distinction needs to be made between the destruction of houses as an incidental effect of ], the wanton destruction of houses during a military advance, and the deliberate targeting of houses during a ]. In the former case, it is commonplace for civilian homes to be used by armed forces as places of shelter or as firing positions. As a result, civilian dwellings become a legitimate military target and property damage is often inevitable as forces seek to expel their opponents from buildings. This can result in the destruction of houses on a massive scale as a side-effect of ]. Following ], for instance, the ] occupation authorities in ] found that 81 percent of all houses in the ] had been destroyed or damaged in the fighting.<ref>Jennifer Leaning, "War and the Environment", in Michael McCally, ''Life Support: Environment Human Health'', p. 276. MIT Press, 2002. {{ISBN|0-262-63257-8}}</ref>
== History ==
Punitive house demolitions are rooted in British military practices dating to the early twentieth century<ref></ref>. In 1945, ] authorities formally legislated these practices under the Defence (Emergency) Regulations. Regulation 119 states that <blockquote>" (1) A Military Commander may by order direct the forfeiture to the Government of Palestine of any house, structure, or land from which he has reason to suspect that any firearm has been illegally discharged, or any bomb, grenade or explosive or incendiary article illegally thrown, or of any house, structure or land situated in any area, town, village, quarter or street the inhabitants or some of the inhabitants of which he is satisfied have committed, or attempted to commit, or abetted the commission of, or been accessories after the fact to the commission of, any offence against these Regulations involving violence or intimidation or any Military Court offence; and when any house, structure or land is forfeited as aforesaid, the Military Commander may destroy the house or the structure or anything growing on the land. </blockquote>
According to author Samuel Katz, "Destroying the house of a terrorist ... was cruel and after the fact, but it was meant to convince fathers to convince their sons that carrying out a terrorist attack, no matter how justified in the grander struggle, meant enormous hardship for the family."<ref name=Katz160>{{citebook |author=Katz, Samuel |title=The Hunt for the Engineer |publisher=Lyons Press |date=2002 |isbn=1585747491| page=160}}</ref>


The question of under what circumstances the destruction of civilian dwellings becomes a legitimate military tactic remains controversial, and recent international conventions have agreed that civilian houses, dwellings, and installations shall not be made the object of attack, except if they are used mainly in support of the military effort.<ref>, International Committee of the Red Cross website</ref>
House demolitions are usually done without prior warning and often during the night. The home's inhabitants are given little time to evacuate - usually between a few minutes to half an hour.


However, there are also many non-combat situations in which house demolition has been used. It has served a variety of purposes, depending on the nature and context of the conflict.
House demolition was used to destroy the family homes of Saleh Abdel Rahim al-Souwi<ref name=Katz160/> (perpetrator of the ]) and ] (]'s chief bombmaker, known as "the engineer").


====Scorched earth====
==Criticism and responses==
{{Main article|Scorched earth}}
The effectiveness of house demolitions as a detterence has been questioned. In 2005 an Isreali Army commission to study house demolitions found no proof of effective deterrence and concluded that the damage caused by the demolitions overrides its effectiveness. As a result, the IDF approved the commissions recommendatiosn to end punitive demolitions of Palestinian houses. <ref></ref>
], razed by ] around 250 BC]]
As a strictly military tactic, house demolition is useful as a defensive means of denying supplies and shelter to an enemy or, when used as an offensive measure, to break an enemy's power by destroying his economy and dispersing his population. It has been used both defensively and offensively in numerous conflicts throughout history. In ], there were frequent examples of cities being razed in order to destroy individual ]s. Notably, ] razed ] in 480 BC during the ]; ] razed ] in modern ] around 250 BC; and in turn, Carthage was itself utterly destroyed by ] in 146 BC, ending the ]. In many instances (Selinus and Carthage being cases in point) the city's inhabitants were enslaved and not permitted to return to their destroyed homes.
A number of ] organizations, including ] and the ], oppose the practice. They argue that the practice violates international laws against ], the destruction of ], and the use of force against civilians.<ref></ref>


In more recent times, the burning of homes was used to devastating effect in the ] in the 17th century, during which ] ordered the systematic destruction of the German cities of ], ], ], ], ] and ] (while sparing the cathedrals). Germany had suffered even more extensively in the earlier ], in which as much as two-thirds of German real estate is estimated to have been destroyed and reconstruction took as long as fifty years.<ref>"Depredations", André Corvisier, in ''A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War'', pp. 189–190</ref> During the ], the burning of ] and ] in 1864 provided large-scale examples of the use of house demolition as a means of wrecking the enemy's economy.


In World War II, civilian homes were deliberately destroyed on a massive scale, particularly on the ] following the orders of Soviet premier ] to raze houses, farms and fields to deny their use to the advancing forces of ]. ] was one of the worst affected regions, suffering the systematic destruction of about 75% of urban housing and many villages.<ref>Helen Fedor, ''Belarus and Moldova: Country Studies'', p. 44. Library of Congress, 1995. {{ISBN|0-8444-0849-2}}</ref> Both sides also engaged in the deliberate large-scale targeting of civilian homes in their respective ]. The Germans repeatedly carried out indiscriminate bombing attacks against civilian areas, such as the ] in 1941 and the ] against England in 1942, and the Allies sought to demoralize the German workforce through the destruction of their homes—a policy known euphemistically as ]. Around 25% of Germany's housing stock was destroyed or heavily damaged in the subsequent Allied bombing campaigns, with some cities suffering the loss of up to 97% of civilian homes.<ref>Jeffry M. Diefendorf, ''In the Wake of War: The Reconstruction of German Cities After World War II'', p. 126. Oxford University Press, 1993. {{ISBN|0-19-507219-7}}</ref>
Israeli historian ] writes:
<blockquote>"Demolishing the homes of civilians merely because a family member has committed a crime is immoral. If, however,... potential suicide murderers... will refrain from killing out of fear that their mothers will become homeless, it would be immoral to leave the Palestinian mothers untouched in their homes while Israeli children die on their school buses."<ref>] (2004): ''"Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars"'' ISBN 1400032431. p.260</ref></blockquote>


====Ethnic cleansing====
==References==
{{Main article|Ethnic cleansing}}
{{Reflist}}
] marked with ]n nationalist symbols and graffiti]]
In the former Yugoslavia, the tactic of home demolition was used by all sides in the conflict as a means of ethnic cleansing to change the ethnic composition of particular areas. It had particularly devastating effects in the rural areas of ], ] and ] where the tactic was most prevalent, because the building of new homes was a life project for which families worked for many years. A house often symbolized the social worth of a family, demonstrating its hard work, commitment to future well-being and standing in the community. The systematic burning of homes was therefore deliberately intended to impoverish the home owners, reduce their social status and permanently prevent them from returning to their places of origins.<ref>Marie-Janine Calic, in Farimah Daftary, Stefan Troebst, ''Radical Ethnic Movements in Contemporary Europe'', p. 118. Berghahn Books, 2003. {{ISBN|1-57181-622-4}}</ref> By the end of the ] in 1995, over 60% of the country's housing stock had been destroyed.<ref>Swanee Hunt, ''This Was Not Our War: Bosnian women reclaiming the peace'', p. 158. Duke University Press, 2004. {{ISBN|0-8223-3355-4}}</ref>


Similar tactics have been used in a variety of other ethnic conflicts. During the ], there were a number of major incidents of the deliberate destruction of ] villages by ]i forces. The Israeli historian ] writes that in the later stages of the 1948 war, " commanders were clearly bent on driving out the population in the area they were conquering".<ref>Morris, Benny (2003). ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-00967-7}}</ref>
== See also ==


The inhabitants of ] experienced one of the more extreme recent examples of the mass use of home demolitions to expedite ethnic cleansing during the ] of 1986–1989. The campaign was mounted ostensibly to eliminate the ] rebels of northern ] but quickly acquired a ] character. The Kurdish opposition estimated that of the approximately 5,000 villages existing in Iraqi ] in 1975, 3,479 had been deliberately destroyed by 1988. Upwards of 100,000 Kurds were killed and tens of thousands more fled Iraq to escape the campaign. ]'s government adopted a policy of "]" in which it systematically replaced the displaced ] with Iraqi Arabs in strategic areas such as ].<ref>Cited by Martin Bruinessen in "Genocide of the Kurds", in Israel W. Charny, Alan L. Berger, ''Genocide: a critical bibliographic review'' vol. 3, p. 186. Transaction Publishers, 1994. {{ISBN|1-56000-172-0}}</ref>
== External links ==


In the conflicts in ], ] and ] during the early 1990s, scores of villages were destroyed in a systematic effort to expel the native ] and ] populations from those regions.<ref>Roberta Cohen, Francis Mading Deng, ''The Forsaken People: Case Studies of the Internally Displaced'', pp. 245, 289. Brookings Institution Press, 1998. {{ISBN|0-8157-1513-7}}</ref> In ], the ] militia has made house demolition a central part of its strategy to expel the population of the region, causing 2.5 million people to be ] as of October 2006.<ref>{{cite news |title=African Union Force Ineffective, Complain Refugees in Darfur |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101500655.html|date=2006-10-16 |newspaper=] | first=Alfred | last=de Montesquiou}}</ref>
*

====Counter-insurgency and collective punishment====
] watching their home being burnt by British forces during the ]]]

Governments facing ] have often used home demolition as a ] technique, as a means of eroding popular support for ]s and denying insurgents the use of villages as "safe havens". ], leader of the insurgent ] during the ], famously observed that "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea."<ref>Dana R. Dillon. . '']'' online. November 25, 2003</ref> Mao advocated the ] of large populations of civilians by means of house demolition to "drain the sea" and deprive insurgents of cover.<ref>Greenhill, Kelly. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, March 17, 2004</ref>

This principle was, however, widely recognized well before it was encapsulated in Mao's famous dictum. ] engaged in the ] from 1069 to 1070, during which ] troops under his command systematically laid waste to rebellious areas in ], can be considered an early example of the use of house demolitions to deprive enemy forces of civilian support. Similarly, during the ], ] forces under ] systematically destroyed ]-owned farmsteads in order to prevent them from supplying food and equipment to ] still active in the field.<ref>{{cite book |last=Giliomee |first=Hermann |title=The Afrikaners: Biography of a People |publisher=University Press of Virginia |date=2003 |isbn=978-0-81392-237-9}}</ref> Comparable tactics were used by the ] during the ] and again during the ], when numerous villages were burned by U.S. troops and local allies. General ] later recalled how he had personally participated in the destruction of ] homes when he was serving in Vietnam as a U.S. Army officer:

<blockquote>We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters. Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? ] had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam.... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference did it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?" <ref>Colin Powell, ''My American Journey'', p. 87. Random House, 1995</ref></blockquote>

] forces used home destruction tactics indiscriminately during the ] when it sought to depopulate the countryside by attacking civilians in the villages in which they lived. Soviet troops would seize a settlement, expel the villagers and raze homes and other buildings before withdrawing. Sometimes the Soviets simply carpet-bombed villages to destroy them outright.<ref>], ''Afghanistan: A New History'', p. 161. Routledge, 2002. {{ISBN|0-415-29826-1}}</ref>

Similar depopulation tactics were adopted by ] in the 1980s and 1990s to combat the rebellion of the Marxist ] in the Kurdish-populated parts of ], known unofficially as ].<ref>Robert W. Olson, ''The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East'', p. 16. University Press of Kentucky, 1996. {{ISBN|0-8131-0896-9}}</ref> About 3,000 villages are estimated to have been destroyed during the Kurdish insurrection.<ref>Paul R. Pillar, ''Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy'', p. 135. Brookings Institution Press, 2001. {{ISBN|0-8157-0004-0}}</ref> In a high-profile case brought before the ] by a group of Kurdish villagers in 2002, the Turkish government was found guilty of violations of the right to private and family life and the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions. The court ordered the Turkish government to pay the applicants pecuniary damages for destruction of the houses and cost of alternative accommodations. It found that the several cases brought before it were but "a small sample of a much wider pattern" of house destruction employed by the Turkish government.<ref>"", Human Rights Watch</ref>

Home demolition has also been used—sometimes in conjunction with mass killings—as a form of ] to penalise civilians for guerrilla activities. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, this was a frequently used and highly controversial tactic employed by the German armed forces to counter the activities of guerrillas behind their front lines. It was used in the ] of 1870–71 during the German occupation of ], when the Germans were faced with attacks by '']'', who were regarded explicitly as ]s. Mayors of occupied villages were ordered to report ''francs-tireurs'' operating in their districts or have their houses burned down. When ''francs-tireurs'' did attack, homes and entire villages were destroyed by the Germans in retaliation. Following the war, the Germans officially endorsed the use of house demolition as one of a number of forms of collective punishment in the ''Kriegs-Etappen-Ordnung'', the manual for the rear echelons, even though this violated international law at the time.<ref>], ''Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany'', p. 119. Cornell University Press, 2006. {{ISBN|0-8014-7293-8}}</ref>

The tactic was used to devastating effect by the ] during the ] in ], in which an estimated 75,000-100,000 Africans were killed. It was used again during ] in a wave of systematic violence in occupied France and Belgium in August and September 1914, prompted in part by a fear of a civilian uprising and possible resistance by ''francs-tireurs''. Some 6,000 people were killed and 15,000-20,000 buildings, including whole villages, were destroyed.<ref>Hull, p. 210</ref> German forces made a much more systematic use of house demolition tactics during World War II, razing numerous villages in occupied countries in reprisal for the killing of German troops by ]. On occasions, the Germans massacred the inhabitants, as happened at ] in ] and ] in ]. The German reprisal policy was deliberately exploited by Soviet partisans, who would place killed Germans near neutral villages in order to trigger a reaction. The Soviets hoped that the resultant retaliatory killings and house demolitions would goad the villagers into actively supporting the partisans.<ref>Roger Dale Petersen, ''Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe'', p. 229. Cambridge University Press, 2001. {{ISBN|0-521-77000-9}}</ref>

]

The use of punitive house demolitions has been highly controversial in the various conflicts of historical ] (now ], the ] and ]). The tactic had originally been used by the ] during the ],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.balbriggan.net/blackandtans.htm |title=Balbriggan. History and Photos. Balbriggan.net. No.1 Web site. |website=www.balbriggan.net |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060501222441/http://www.balbriggan.net/blackandtans.htm |archive-date=2006-05-01}} </ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dcu.ie/~foxs/irhist/september_1920.htm |title=September 1920 |accessdate=2009-02-19 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090822102648/http://www.dcu.ie/~foxs/irhist/september_1920.htm |archivedate=2009-08-22 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iQN4ifavThMC&q=house+burning+ira+cork&pg=PA45 | title=Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies: Guerrillas and Their Opponents Since 1750| isbn=9780415239332| last1=Beckett| first1=Ian Frederick William| year=2001| publisher=Psychology Press}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dcu.ie/~foxs/irhist/march_1921.htm |title=March 1921 |accessdate=2010-03-26 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100330024621/http://www.dcu.ie/~foxs/irhist/march_1921.htm |archivedate=2010-03-30 }} March 1921</ref> and used again by British forces in ] during the ]. It was used as a means to "convince fathers to convince their sons that carrying out a ] attack, no matter how justified in the grander struggle, meant enormous hardship for the family."<ref name=Katz160>{{cite book |author=Katz, Samuel |title=The Hunt for the Engineer |publisher=Lyons Press |year=2002 |isbn=1-58574-749-1}}, page 160</ref> Its use was continued by the ] on-again-off-again fashion during the ] of the early 21st century, during which more than 3,000 civilian homes have been demolished.<ref> ]</ref> Notably, the family homes of a number of Palestinian bombers were targeted in retaliation for terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. However, the usefulness of such tactics has been questioned; in 2005 an Israeli Army commission to study house demolitions found no proof of effective deterrence and concluded that the damage caused by the demolitions outweighed their effectiveness. As a result, the ] approved the commission's recommendations to end punitive demolitions of Palestinian houses.<ref>Ingela Karlsson, " {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928013706/http://www.diakonia.se/sa/node.asp?node=859 |date=2007-09-28 }}". Diakonia, 16 November 2006. Retrieved 17-6-2007.</ref> (See ] for more on this topic.)

===Civil uses===
House demolition has been practiced in many states throughout history as a form of punishment for a variety of legal offences. This should be distinguished from purely administrative demolitions, such as in the context of removing illegally constructed homes and other buildings.

During the medieval period, the inhabitants of ] and northern ], particularly ], faced the destruction of their homes for a variety of offences. For instance, the demolition of one's house was prescribed for those convicted of harbouring an outlaw.<ref>Carl Ludwing von Bar, ''A History of Continental Criminal Law'', p. 193. The Lawbook Exchange Ltd., 1999. {{ISBN|1-58477-013-9}}</ref> The practice also spread to the ] of ], where a ] who refused to perform his civic duties could find himself liable to have his house destroyed.<ref>John Horace Round, ''Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries''. S. Sonnenschein, 1895</ref> Elsewhere in Europe, violence against the person was often punished by retaliation against the offender's property. Those convicted of murder in 18th century ] were subject to a rapidly escalating range of penalties; the first offence was merely punished with a fine, but a third offence was punished by the culprit being shot, his home demolished and all of his cattle and property confiscated.<ref>Edward Dodwell, ''A Classical and Topographical Tour Through Greece, During the Years 1801, 1805, and 1806'', p. 20. Rodwell & Martin, 1819</ref>

Home demolition was often employed by the state as a means of punishing crimes regarded as exceptionally dishonourable. In a number of medieval European countries, the relatives of those convicted of offences such as ], ], ] or ] were sometimes collectively punished by having their homes demolished and their possessions confiscated.<ref>Florike Egmond, Robert Zwijnenberg, ''Bodily Extremities: Preoccupations with the Human Body in Early Modern European Culture'', p. 106. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2003. {{ISBN|0-7546-0726-7}}</ref> ] was similarly treated as an offence of exceptional seriousness in ] ]; the offender would be executed, his house razed and the earth beneath it dug up.<ref>Peter Thompson, Robert Macklin, ''The Man Who Died Twice: The Life and Adventures of Morrison of Peking'', p. 90. Allen & Unwin, 2004. {{ISBN|1-74114-012-9}}</ref> In 18th century ], anyone convicted of committing treason or other major offences against the king was punished with the utmost severity; he would be executed along with his entire family, their home would be destroyed and all the contents and possessions confiscated, and nobody else would be permitted to build on the site of the razed house.<ref>Vibeke Roeper, Boudewijn Walraven, Jean-Paul Buys, Hendrik Hamel, ''Hamel's World: A Dutch-Korean Encounter in the Seventeenth Century'', p. 138. Uitgeverij Boom, 2003. {{ISBN|90-5875-123-6}}</ref>

The use of house demolition was also prescribed in a number of states for offences against the social order. In the ] ], drunkenness was punished by publicly cutting off the offender's hair and demolishing his house.<ref>Edward John Payne, ''History of the New World Called America'', p. 533. Clarendon Press, 1899</ref> The illegal sale of alcohol was punished in a similar way in early 20th century ], where a person convicted of selling alcohol to a ] would be liable to be bound and tortured and have his home destroyed.<ref>Tudor Parfitt, ''The Road to Redemption: the Jews of the Yemen, 1900-1950'', p. 114. Brill Academic Publishers, 1996. {{ISBN|90-04-10544-1}}</ref> Religious offences were punished similarly by the ]; the ] of 1229, directed against the ] of southern France, provided that "when it is proved before the bishops that any one has died a heretic, his goods shall be destroyed and his house razed."<ref>Adam Blair, ''History of the Waldenses: With an Introductory Sketch of the History of the Christian Churches'', p. 364. A. Black, 1832</ref>

The ''Ordinamenti della Guistizia'' (Ordinances of Justice) of the medieval Italian city-state of ] mandated a range of harsh penalties against nobles who killed or ordered the killing of citizens; the punishments included execution, the forfeiting of property and the razing of the offender's house.<ref>Edgcumbe Staley, ''Guilds of Florence'', p. 50. Ayer Publishing, 1972. {{ISBN|0-405-08992-9}}</ref> The ordinances were passed against the background of political and social conflict between powerful aristocrats and the ordinary citizens or ''popolares'', and may have been a conscious imitation of the punishments meted out to overmighty aristocrats in the ] 1,300 years previously, when those suspected of aiming at ] risked not only execution but the destruction of their homes as well. This act was seen as a symbolic destruction of the offender's family and social status. To the Romans, the home was more than just a possession; it was a sacred space protected by the ] (household gods) and was a focus for personal honour. ] suffered the loss and destruction of his homes at the hands of ] in 58 BC, and later spoke in his speech '']'' ("About His House") of the "dishonour" and "grief" that he experienced as a result.<ref>Richard P. Saller, ''Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family'', p. 93. Cambridge University Press, 1994. {{ISBN|0-521-59978-4}}</ref>

==Means==
]R ] in service with the ] ]]]
The demolition of a house for military purposes is often undertaken in very different ways to conventional civilian demolitions. In peacetime situations, demolition is merely the first stage in a process that is usually intended to clear the ground for subsequent re-use (for instance, replacing an old building with a newer one or decommissioning an old industrial building). It is undertaken with extensive preparations, such as stripping the property of items of value, removing hazardous materials such as glass and asbestos insulation, and preparing the structure by removing features that might impede the demolition (such as internal partitions).

Military house demolitions are undertaken with the demolition itself being the primary objective, the aim being to deliberately deny subsequent use of the property. The methods used are therefore focused on simplicity and speed. Unlike civilian demolition, military house demolition is also often intended to destroy property ''within'' a building, such as food or personal effects, either to deny its use to an enemy or to impoverish the civilian occupants. House demolitions thus often takes place without the occupant's possessions first being removed and with minimal preparations beforehand.

In many conflicts, demolition frequently is carried out by using fire—often set with the aid of ]s—as a simple but very effective means of quickly rendering a property uninhabitable. ]s or ]s may be used to knock out the walls of a building, causing it to collapse. ] forces may use ]s to demolish a building, or it may simply be destroyed through direct bombardment by ] or ]. The end result is not always the total demolition of a building—the walls may remain standing in the event of a fire, for instance—but it does achieve the main objective of making the building unfit for habitation.

==Legal issues==
The ], promulgated in 1863 by President ], was one of the first declarations specifically prohibiting the wanton destruction of a district in wartime.

Article 23(g) of the ] similarly prohibited military forces "to destroy or seize the enemy's property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war", and Article 28 of the same convention stated that "the pillage of a town or place, even when taken by assault, is prohibited."

The massive destruction of civilian property inflicted during Second World War II prompted international jurists to address the issue again in 1945 when the ] was enacted, establishing the procedures and laws by which the ] were to be conducted. Article 6(b) of the Charter thus condemned the "wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity" and classified it as a violation of the laws or customs of war. The same definition was replicated in the founding charters of the ] and the ].<ref>Karen Hulme, ''War Torn Environment: Interpreting the Legal Threshold'', p. 128. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004. {{ISBN|90-04-13848-X}}</ref>

The use of house demolition under ] is today governed by the ], enacted in 1949, which protects non-combatants in occupied territories. Article 53 provides that "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons ... is prohibited."<ref>, International Committee of the Red Cross</ref> In its accompanying commentaries, the ] refers to demolition only being justified by "imperative military requirements", which the Convention itself distinguishes from security considerations. The ICRC has clarified that the term "military operations" refers only to "movements, maneuvers, and other action taken by the armed forces ''with a view to fighting''" and does not cover action undertaken as a punishment. In a further reservation, the ICRC regards the tactic as legitimate only "where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations". The use of collective punishments is forbidden by the Hague Conventions, as well as by Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which expressly prohibits the imposition of punishments on a protected person for a offenses not personally committed.<ref>David Kretzmer, ''The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories'', p. 148. SUNY Press, 2002. {{ISBN|0-7914-5337-5}}</ref>

Israeli use of house demolitions has been particularly controversial. However, Israel, which is a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, asserts that the terms of the Convention are not applicable to the ] on the grounds that it does not exercise sovereignty in the territories and is thus under no obligation to apply the treaty in those areas. This position is rejected by human rights organisations such as ], which notes that "it is a basic principle of human rights law that international human rights treaties are applicable in all areas in which states parties exercise effective control, regardless of whether or not they exercise sovereignty in that area."<ref name="Amnesty-rubble"> . ], 18 May 2004.</ref>

A number of ] prosecutions have included charges relating to the illegal destruction of property. A number of those prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have been prosecuted for ordering "wanton destruction", and the International Criminal Court has also indicted at least one individual for similar offences in ].<ref>" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070612215712/http://www.icc-cpi.int/press/pressreleases/241.html |date=2007-06-12 }}", International Criminal Court, 2 May 2007.</ref>

International law nonetheless still permits a fairly wide degree of latitude for military commanders to destroy civilian property when required to do so by military necessity. In ''U.S. v. Von Leeb'', one of the Nuremberg trials held in 1948, ] and six other senior German generals were accused of the wanton devastation of Soviet villages during a German retreat on the Eastern Front. The acts of destruction were carried out in anticipation of the enemy advancing through the devastated zones in the imminent future and were conducted in mid-winter, when the lack of shelter could reasonably be expected to impede the Russians' progress. The civilian population had been evacuated beforehand. The tribunal found von Leeb and his co-defendants not guilty on the charge of devastation, taking the view that "a great deal of latitude must be accorded" to a commander in a tactical situation such as the one that von Leeb found himself in.<ref>Florentino Panlilio Feliciano, Myres Smith McDougal, ''The International Law of War: Transnational Coercion and World Public Order'', p. 602. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1994. {{ISBN|0-7923-2584-2}}</ref>

==See also==
* ]
* ]
* British government World War II ] paper.
* ]
* ] – ]'s politically motivated ] in ]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}


{{DEFAULTSORT:House Demolition}}
]
] ]
] ]
]

Latest revision as of 22:38, 3 September 2024

Military tactic This article is about the demolition of houses for military or punitive civil purposes. For the demolition of houses in the Palestinian Territories, see House demolition in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. For the demolition of buildings in general, see demolition.
Demolition of a house in Iraq containing a weapons cache

House demolition is primarily a military tactic which has been used in many conflicts for a variety of purposes. It has been employed as a scorched earth tactic to deprive the advancing enemy of food and shelter, or to wreck the enemy's economy and infrastructure. It has also been used for purposes of counter-insurgency and ethnic cleansing. Systematic house demolition has been a notable factor in a number of recent or ongoing conflicts including the Darfur conflict in Sudan, the Iraq War, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Vietnam War, and the Yugoslav wars.

The tactic has often been extremely controversial. Its use in warfare is governed by the Fourth Geneva Convention and other instruments of international law, and international war crimes courts have prosecuted the misuse of house demolition on a number of occasions as a violation of the laws of war. Historically, it has also been widely used by a variety of states and peoples as a civil punishment for criminal offences ranging from treason to public intoxication

Uses

Military uses

97% of Wesel was destroyed before it was finally taken by Allied troops.
Bombed buildings in London.

A distinction needs to be made between the destruction of houses as an incidental effect of military necessity, the wanton destruction of houses during a military advance, and the deliberate targeting of houses during a military occupation. In the former case, it is commonplace for civilian homes to be used by armed forces as places of shelter or as firing positions. As a result, civilian dwellings become a legitimate military target and property damage is often inevitable as forces seek to expel their opponents from buildings. This can result in the destruction of houses on a massive scale as a side-effect of urban warfare. Following World War II, for instance, the United States occupation authorities in Germany found that 81 percent of all houses in the American Zone had been destroyed or damaged in the fighting.

The question of under what circumstances the destruction of civilian dwellings becomes a legitimate military tactic remains controversial, and recent international conventions have agreed that civilian houses, dwellings, and installations shall not be made the object of attack, except if they are used mainly in support of the military effort.

However, there are also many non-combat situations in which house demolition has been used. It has served a variety of purposes, depending on the nature and context of the conflict.

Scorched earth

Main article: Scorched earth
The ruins of Selinus, razed by Carthage around 250 BC

As a strictly military tactic, house demolition is useful as a defensive means of denying supplies and shelter to an enemy or, when used as an offensive measure, to break an enemy's power by destroying his economy and dispersing his population. It has been used both defensively and offensively in numerous conflicts throughout history. In classical antiquity, there were frequent examples of cities being razed in order to destroy individual city-states. Notably, Xerxes I of Persia razed Athens in 480 BC during the Greco-Persian Wars; Carthage razed Selinus in modern Sicily around 250 BC; and in turn, Carthage was itself utterly destroyed by Rome in 146 BC, ending the Punic Wars. In many instances (Selinus and Carthage being cases in point) the city's inhabitants were enslaved and not permitted to return to their destroyed homes.

In more recent times, the burning of homes was used to devastating effect in the War of the Grand Alliance in the 17th century, during which Louis XIV of France ordered the systematic destruction of the German cities of Bingen, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Oppenheim, Spier and Worms (while sparing the cathedrals). Germany had suffered even more extensively in the earlier Thirty Years' War, in which as much as two-thirds of German real estate is estimated to have been destroyed and reconstruction took as long as fifty years. During the American Civil War, the burning of Atlanta, Georgia and Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864 provided large-scale examples of the use of house demolition as a means of wrecking the enemy's economy.

In World War II, civilian homes were deliberately destroyed on a massive scale, particularly on the Eastern Front following the orders of Soviet premier Joseph Stalin to raze houses, farms and fields to deny their use to the advancing forces of Nazi Germany. Belarus was one of the worst affected regions, suffering the systematic destruction of about 75% of urban housing and many villages. Both sides also engaged in the deliberate large-scale targeting of civilian homes in their respective strategic bombing campaigns. The Germans repeatedly carried out indiscriminate bombing attacks against civilian areas, such as the bombing of Belgrade in 1941 and the Baedeker Blitz against England in 1942, and the Allies sought to demoralize the German workforce through the destruction of their homes—a policy known euphemistically as dehousing. Around 25% of Germany's housing stock was destroyed or heavily damaged in the subsequent Allied bombing campaigns, with some cities suffering the loss of up to 97% of civilian homes.

Ethnic cleansing

Main article: Ethnic cleansing
A destroyed house in Croatia marked with Serbian nationalist symbols and graffiti

In the former Yugoslavia, the tactic of home demolition was used by all sides in the conflict as a means of ethnic cleansing to change the ethnic composition of particular areas. It had particularly devastating effects in the rural areas of Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo where the tactic was most prevalent, because the building of new homes was a life project for which families worked for many years. A house often symbolized the social worth of a family, demonstrating its hard work, commitment to future well-being and standing in the community. The systematic burning of homes was therefore deliberately intended to impoverish the home owners, reduce their social status and permanently prevent them from returning to their places of origins. By the end of the Bosnian War in 1995, over 60% of the country's housing stock had been destroyed.

Similar tactics have been used in a variety of other ethnic conflicts. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, there were a number of major incidents of the deliberate destruction of Arab villages by Israeli forces. The Israeli historian Benny Morris writes that in the later stages of the 1948 war, " commanders were clearly bent on driving out the population in the area they were conquering".

The inhabitants of Iraqi Kurdistan experienced one of the more extreme recent examples of the mass use of home demolitions to expedite ethnic cleansing during the Al-Anfal Campaign of 1986–1989. The campaign was mounted ostensibly to eliminate the peshmerga rebels of northern Iraq but quickly acquired a genocidal character. The Kurdish opposition estimated that of the approximately 5,000 villages existing in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1975, 3,479 had been deliberately destroyed by 1988. Upwards of 100,000 Kurds were killed and tens of thousands more fled Iraq to escape the campaign. Saddam Hussein's government adopted a policy of "Arabization" in which it systematically replaced the displaced Kurds with Iraqi Arabs in strategic areas such as Kirkuk.

In the conflicts in Abkhazia, North Ossetia and South Ossetia during the early 1990s, scores of villages were destroyed in a systematic effort to expel the native Georgian and Ingush populations from those regions. In Darfur, the Janjaweed militia has made house demolition a central part of its strategy to expel the population of the region, causing 2.5 million people to be displaced as of October 2006.

Counter-insurgency and collective punishment

Boers watching their home being burnt by British forces during the Second Boer War

Governments facing insurgencies have often used home demolition as a counterinsurgency technique, as a means of eroding popular support for guerrillas and denying insurgents the use of villages as "safe havens". Mao Zedong, leader of the insurgent Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War, famously observed that "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea." Mao advocated the forced migration of large populations of civilians by means of house demolition to "drain the sea" and deprive insurgents of cover.

This principle was, however, widely recognized well before it was encapsulated in Mao's famous dictum. William the Conqueror engaged in the harrying of the North from 1069 to 1070, during which Norman troops under his command systematically laid waste to rebellious areas in Northern England, can be considered an early example of the use of house demolitions to deprive enemy forces of civilian support. Similarly, during the Second Boer War, British forces under Lord Kitchener systematically destroyed Boer-owned farmsteads in order to prevent them from supplying food and equipment to Boer guerrillas still active in the field. Comparable tactics were used by the United States military during the Philippine–American War and again during the Vietnam War, when numerous villages were burned by U.S. troops and local allies. General Colin Powell later recalled how he had personally participated in the destruction of Montagnard homes when he was serving in Vietnam as a U.S. Army officer:

We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters. Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam.... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference did it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?"

Soviet forces used home destruction tactics indiscriminately during the Soviet–Afghan War when it sought to depopulate the countryside by attacking civilians in the villages in which they lived. Soviet troops would seize a settlement, expel the villagers and raze homes and other buildings before withdrawing. Sometimes the Soviets simply carpet-bombed villages to destroy them outright.

Similar depopulation tactics were adopted by Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s to combat the rebellion of the Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party in the Kurdish-populated parts of southeastern Turkey, known unofficially as Turkish Kurdistan. About 3,000 villages are estimated to have been destroyed during the Kurdish insurrection. In a high-profile case brought before the European Court of Human Rights by a group of Kurdish villagers in 2002, the Turkish government was found guilty of violations of the right to private and family life and the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions. The court ordered the Turkish government to pay the applicants pecuniary damages for destruction of the houses and cost of alternative accommodations. It found that the several cases brought before it were but "a small sample of a much wider pattern" of house destruction employed by the Turkish government.

Home demolition has also been used—sometimes in conjunction with mass killings—as a form of collective punishment to penalise civilians for guerrilla activities. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, this was a frequently used and highly controversial tactic employed by the German armed forces to counter the activities of guerrillas behind their front lines. It was used in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 during the German occupation of France, when the Germans were faced with attacks by francs-tireurs, who were regarded explicitly as unlawful combatants. Mayors of occupied villages were ordered to report francs-tireurs operating in their districts or have their houses burned down. When francs-tireurs did attack, homes and entire villages were destroyed by the Germans in retaliation. Following the war, the Germans officially endorsed the use of house demolition as one of a number of forms of collective punishment in the Kriegs-Etappen-Ordnung, the manual for the rear echelons, even though this violated international law at the time.

The tactic was used to devastating effect by the Imperial German Army during the Herero and Namaqua Genocide in German South-West Africa, in which an estimated 75,000-100,000 Africans were killed. It was used again during World War I in a wave of systematic violence in occupied France and Belgium in August and September 1914, prompted in part by a fear of a civilian uprising and possible resistance by francs-tireurs. Some 6,000 people were killed and 15,000-20,000 buildings, including whole villages, were destroyed. German forces made a much more systematic use of house demolition tactics during World War II, razing numerous villages in occupied countries in reprisal for the killing of German troops by partisans. On occasions, the Germans massacred the inhabitants, as happened at Oradour-sur-Glane in France and Lidice in Czechoslovakia. The German reprisal policy was deliberately exploited by Soviet partisans, who would place killed Germans near neutral villages in order to trigger a reaction. The Soviets hoped that the resultant retaliatory killings and house demolitions would goad the villagers into actively supporting the partisans.

A Palestinian home after demolition by Israeli security forces

The use of punitive house demolitions has been highly controversial in the various conflicts of historical Palestine (now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip). The tactic had originally been used by the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Irish War for Independence, and used again by British forces in Mandatory Palestine during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. It was used as a means to "convince fathers to convince their sons that carrying out a terrorist attack, no matter how justified in the grander struggle, meant enormous hardship for the family." Its use was continued by the Israeli government on-again-off-again fashion during the Second Intifada of the early 21st century, during which more than 3,000 civilian homes have been demolished. Notably, the family homes of a number of Palestinian bombers were targeted in retaliation for terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. However, the usefulness of such tactics has been questioned; in 2005 an Israeli Army commission to study house demolitions found no proof of effective deterrence and concluded that the damage caused by the demolitions outweighed their effectiveness. As a result, the Israel Defense Forces approved the commission's recommendations to end punitive demolitions of Palestinian houses. (See House demolition in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict for more on this topic.)

Civil uses

House demolition has been practiced in many states throughout history as a form of punishment for a variety of legal offences. This should be distinguished from purely administrative demolitions, such as in the context of removing illegally constructed homes and other buildings.

During the medieval period, the inhabitants of Flanders and northern France, particularly Picardy, faced the destruction of their homes for a variety of offences. For instance, the demolition of one's house was prescribed for those convicted of harbouring an outlaw. The practice also spread to the Cinque Ports of England, where a burgess who refused to perform his civic duties could find himself liable to have his house destroyed. Elsewhere in Europe, violence against the person was often punished by retaliation against the offender's property. Those convicted of murder in 18th century Montenegro were subject to a rapidly escalating range of penalties; the first offence was merely punished with a fine, but a third offence was punished by the culprit being shot, his home demolished and all of his cattle and property confiscated.

Home demolition was often employed by the state as a means of punishing crimes regarded as exceptionally dishonourable. In a number of medieval European countries, the relatives of those convicted of offences such as incest, sodomy, parricide or treason were sometimes collectively punished by having their homes demolished and their possessions confiscated. Patricide was similarly treated as an offence of exceptional seriousness in Qing Dynasty China; the offender would be executed, his house razed and the earth beneath it dug up. In 18th century Korea, anyone convicted of committing treason or other major offences against the king was punished with the utmost severity; he would be executed along with his entire family, their home would be destroyed and all the contents and possessions confiscated, and nobody else would be permitted to build on the site of the razed house.

The use of house demolition was also prescribed in a number of states for offences against the social order. In the Pre-Columbian Aztec Empire, drunkenness was punished by publicly cutting off the offender's hair and demolishing his house. The illegal sale of alcohol was punished in a similar way in early 20th century Yemen, where a person convicted of selling alcohol to a Muslim would be liable to be bound and tortured and have his home destroyed. Religious offences were punished similarly by the Inquisition; the Treaty of Meaux of 1229, directed against the Albigensians of southern France, provided that "when it is proved before the bishops that any one has died a heretic, his goods shall be destroyed and his house razed."

The Ordinamenti della Guistizia (Ordinances of Justice) of the medieval Italian city-state of Florence mandated a range of harsh penalties against nobles who killed or ordered the killing of citizens; the punishments included execution, the forfeiting of property and the razing of the offender's house. The ordinances were passed against the background of political and social conflict between powerful aristocrats and the ordinary citizens or popolares, and may have been a conscious imitation of the punishments meted out to overmighty aristocrats in the Roman Republic 1,300 years previously, when those suspected of aiming at tyranny risked not only execution but the destruction of their homes as well. This act was seen as a symbolic destruction of the offender's family and social status. To the Romans, the home was more than just a possession; it was a sacred space protected by the Di Penates (household gods) and was a focus for personal honour. Cicero suffered the loss and destruction of his homes at the hands of Publius Clodius Pulcher in 58 BC, and later spoke in his speech De Domo Sua ("About His House") of the "dishonour" and "grief" that he experienced as a result.

Means

IDF Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer in service with the Israeli Defense Forces Combat Engineering Corps

The demolition of a house for military purposes is often undertaken in very different ways to conventional civilian demolitions. In peacetime situations, demolition is merely the first stage in a process that is usually intended to clear the ground for subsequent re-use (for instance, replacing an old building with a newer one or decommissioning an old industrial building). It is undertaken with extensive preparations, such as stripping the property of items of value, removing hazardous materials such as glass and asbestos insulation, and preparing the structure by removing features that might impede the demolition (such as internal partitions).

Military house demolitions are undertaken with the demolition itself being the primary objective, the aim being to deliberately deny subsequent use of the property. The methods used are therefore focused on simplicity and speed. Unlike civilian demolition, military house demolition is also often intended to destroy property within a building, such as food or personal effects, either to deny its use to an enemy or to impoverish the civilian occupants. House demolitions thus often takes place without the occupant's possessions first being removed and with minimal preparations beforehand.

In many conflicts, demolition frequently is carried out by using fire—often set with the aid of accelerants—as a simple but very effective means of quickly rendering a property uninhabitable. Armored bulldozers or tanks may be used to knock out the walls of a building, causing it to collapse. Combat engineering forces may use explosives to demolish a building, or it may simply be destroyed through direct bombardment by aircraft or artillery. The end result is not always the total demolition of a building—the walls may remain standing in the event of a fire, for instance—but it does achieve the main objective of making the building unfit for habitation.

Legal issues

The Lieber Code, promulgated in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, was one of the first declarations specifically prohibiting the wanton destruction of a district in wartime.

Article 23(g) of the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare similarly prohibited military forces "to destroy or seize the enemy's property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war", and Article 28 of the same convention stated that "the pillage of a town or place, even when taken by assault, is prohibited."

The massive destruction of civilian property inflicted during Second World War II prompted international jurists to address the issue again in 1945 when the Nuremberg Charter was enacted, establishing the procedures and laws by which the Nuremberg trials were to be conducted. Article 6(b) of the Charter thus condemned the "wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity" and classified it as a violation of the laws or customs of war. The same definition was replicated in the founding charters of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court.

The use of house demolition under international law is today governed by the Fourth Geneva Convention, enacted in 1949, which protects non-combatants in occupied territories. Article 53 provides that "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons ... is prohibited." In its accompanying commentaries, the International Committee of the Red Cross refers to demolition only being justified by "imperative military requirements", which the Convention itself distinguishes from security considerations. The ICRC has clarified that the term "military operations" refers only to "movements, maneuvers, and other action taken by the armed forces with a view to fighting" and does not cover action undertaken as a punishment. In a further reservation, the ICRC regards the tactic as legitimate only "where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations". The use of collective punishments is forbidden by the Hague Conventions, as well as by Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which expressly prohibits the imposition of punishments on a protected person for a offenses not personally committed.

Israeli use of house demolitions has been particularly controversial. However, Israel, which is a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, asserts that the terms of the Convention are not applicable to the Palestinian territories on the grounds that it does not exercise sovereignty in the territories and is thus under no obligation to apply the treaty in those areas. This position is rejected by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, which notes that "it is a basic principle of human rights law that international human rights treaties are applicable in all areas in which states parties exercise effective control, regardless of whether or not they exercise sovereignty in that area."

A number of war crimes prosecutions have included charges relating to the illegal destruction of property. A number of those prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have been prosecuted for ordering "wanton destruction", and the International Criminal Court has also indicted at least one individual for similar offences in Darfur.

International law nonetheless still permits a fairly wide degree of latitude for military commanders to destroy civilian property when required to do so by military necessity. In U.S. v. Von Leeb, one of the Nuremberg trials held in 1948, Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb and six other senior German generals were accused of the wanton devastation of Soviet villages during a German retreat on the Eastern Front. The acts of destruction were carried out in anticipation of the enemy advancing through the devastated zones in the imminent future and were conducted in mid-winter, when the lack of shelter could reasonably be expected to impede the Russians' progress. The civilian population had been evacuated beforehand. The tribunal found von Leeb and his co-defendants not guilty on the charge of devastation, taking the view that "a great deal of latitude must be accorded" to a commander in a tactical situation such as the one that von Leeb found himself in.

See also

References

  1. RAF campaign diary March 1945 Archived 2007-07-06 at the UK Government Web Archive See the entry for 23/24 March 1945
  2. Jennifer Leaning, "War and the Environment", in Michael McCally, Life Support: Environment Human Health, p. 276. MIT Press, 2002. ISBN 0-262-63257-8
  3. International Humanitarian Law - Treaties & Documents, International Committee of the Red Cross website
  4. "Depredations", André Corvisier, in A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War, pp. 189–190
  5. Helen Fedor, Belarus and Moldova: Country Studies, p. 44. Library of Congress, 1995. ISBN 0-8444-0849-2
  6. Jeffry M. Diefendorf, In the Wake of War: The Reconstruction of German Cities After World War II, p. 126. Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507219-7
  7. Marie-Janine Calic, in Farimah Daftary, Stefan Troebst, Radical Ethnic Movements in Contemporary Europe, p. 118. Berghahn Books, 2003. ISBN 1-57181-622-4
  8. Swanee Hunt, This Was Not Our War: Bosnian women reclaiming the peace, p. 158. Duke University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8223-3355-4
  9. Morris, Benny (2003). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00967-7
  10. Cited by Martin Bruinessen in "Genocide of the Kurds", in Israel W. Charny, Alan L. Berger, Genocide: a critical bibliographic review vol. 3, p. 186. Transaction Publishers, 1994. ISBN 1-56000-172-0
  11. Roberta Cohen, Francis Mading Deng, The Forsaken People: Case Studies of the Internally Displaced, pp. 245, 289. Brookings Institution Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8157-1513-7
  12. de Montesquiou, Alfred (2006-10-16). "African Union Force Ineffective, Complain Refugees in Darfur". The Washington Post.
  13. Dana R. Dillon. Insurgency Has Its Limits. National Review online. November 25, 2003
  14. Greenhill, Kelly. "Draining the Sea, or Feeding the Fire?: The Use of Forced Migration in Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency Operations Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, March 17, 2004
  15. Giliomee, Hermann (2003). The Afrikaners: Biography of a People. University Press of Virginia. ISBN 978-0-81392-237-9.
  16. Colin Powell, My American Journey, p. 87. Random House, 1995
  17. Martin Ewans, Afghanistan: A New History, p. 161. Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-29826-1
  18. Robert W. Olson, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East, p. 16. University Press of Kentucky, 1996. ISBN 0-8131-0896-9
  19. Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 135. Brookings Institution Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8157-0004-0
  20. "Villages from Kelekçi win international justice", Human Rights Watch
  21. Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, p. 119. Cornell University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8014-7293-8
  22. Hull, p. 210
  23. Roger Dale Petersen, Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe, p. 229. Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-521-77000-9
  24. "Balbriggan. History and Photos. Balbriggan.net. No.1 Web site". www.balbriggan.net. Archived from the original on 2006-05-01.
  25. "September 1920". Archived from the original on 2009-08-22. Retrieved 2009-02-19.
  26. Beckett, Ian Frederick William (2001). Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies: Guerrillas and Their Opponents Since 1750. Psychology Press. ISBN 9780415239332.
  27. "March 1921". Archived from the original on 2010-03-30. Retrieved 2010-03-26. March 1921
  28. Katz, Samuel (2002). The Hunt for the Engineer. Lyons Press. ISBN 1-58574-749-1., page 160
  29. Through No Fault of Their Own: Israel's Punitive House Demolitions in the al-Aqsa Intifada B'Tselem
  30. Ingela Karlsson, "Is the House Demolition Policy Legal under International Humanitarian Law? Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine". Diakonia, 16 November 2006. Retrieved 17-6-2007.
  31. Carl Ludwing von Bar, A History of Continental Criminal Law, p. 193. The Lawbook Exchange Ltd., 1999. ISBN 1-58477-013-9
  32. John Horace Round, Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. S. Sonnenschein, 1895
  33. Edward Dodwell, A Classical and Topographical Tour Through Greece, During the Years 1801, 1805, and 1806, p. 20. Rodwell & Martin, 1819
  34. Florike Egmond, Robert Zwijnenberg, Bodily Extremities: Preoccupations with the Human Body in Early Modern European Culture, p. 106. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2003. ISBN 0-7546-0726-7
  35. Peter Thompson, Robert Macklin, The Man Who Died Twice: The Life and Adventures of Morrison of Peking, p. 90. Allen & Unwin, 2004. ISBN 1-74114-012-9
  36. Vibeke Roeper, Boudewijn Walraven, Jean-Paul Buys, Hendrik Hamel, Hamel's World: A Dutch-Korean Encounter in the Seventeenth Century, p. 138. Uitgeverij Boom, 2003. ISBN 90-5875-123-6
  37. Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, p. 533. Clarendon Press, 1899
  38. Tudor Parfitt, The Road to Redemption: the Jews of the Yemen, 1900-1950, p. 114. Brill Academic Publishers, 1996. ISBN 90-04-10544-1
  39. Adam Blair, History of the Waldenses: With an Introductory Sketch of the History of the Christian Churches, p. 364. A. Black, 1832
  40. Edgcumbe Staley, Guilds of Florence, p. 50. Ayer Publishing, 1972. ISBN 0-405-08992-9
  41. Richard P. Saller, Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family, p. 93. Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-521-59978-4
  42. Karen Hulme, War Torn Environment: Interpreting the Legal Threshold, p. 128. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004. ISBN 90-04-13848-X
  43. Fourth Geneva Convention, International Committee of the Red Cross
  44. David Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories, p. 148. SUNY Press, 2002. ISBN 0-7914-5337-5
  45. Israel and the Occupied Territories Under the rubble: House demolition and destruction of land and property . Amnesty International, 18 May 2004.
  46. "Warrants of Arrest for the Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs of Sudan, and a leader of the Militia/Janjaweed Archived 2007-06-12 at the Wayback Machine", International Criminal Court, 2 May 2007.
  47. Florentino Panlilio Feliciano, Myres Smith McDougal, The International Law of War: Transnational Coercion and World Public Order, p. 602. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1994. ISBN 0-7923-2584-2
Categories: